

When a file is opened on an HFS+ volume, the following conditions are tested: HFS+ also has a few specific optimizations. Now, here's a direct quote of what I'm referring to: The specific information is listed in "Mac OS X Filesystems" section.
Techtool pro defragment mac os x#
In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation.įYI: Mac OS X DEFRAGMENTS itself (on an HFS+ volume)! If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files, there's a chance they could be fragmented. There is also the a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would actually decrease performance. Optimizing them is a major effort for very little practical gain. Mac OS X systems have hundreds of thousands of small files, most of which are rarely accessed. This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."Īggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance.įor these reasons, there is little benefit to defragmenting. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.įragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks.
Techtool pro defragment for mac os x#
Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes.

With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to fill up every "nook and cranny." Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space. Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years ago. You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Personally, I wouldn't use any version of Nortons.
